Category: Science Fiction

Chief Warrant Officer Edward Michelsson February the 27th 1253 CNS Blind Hercules En-Route from Autumn Breeze My name is Edward Michelsson, Chief Warrant Officer assigned as supporting investigator to the loss—possible scuttling—of the heavy transport Blind Hercules bound for Wolf Tertius from home-port of Autumn Breeze bearing a cargo largely consisting of vacuum-sealed rations, machining parts, and commercial-grade prosthetics. Of the five-man crew, only a single corpse was discovered, drifting within the armored fuselage of the artillery-class panoply Plume surreptitiously secreted aboard the Hercules for transport with the knowledge of one Gregory Samuels, the corpse discovered within her largely unscarred auspices. Cause of death was asphyxiation with the consumption of the several days worth of available oxygen. The remaining crew are missing, presumed dead, their bodies perhaps obliterated in the explosion that was evident in the skies of Lacrimae Dearum on Sunday morning January 7, 1253 CNS. What is known—in the investigation of the debris, the corpse, and from the Plume’s library, is that the remaining crew failed to compose routine logs—any logs in actuality—of their status and activities altogether as of September 13th, 1252 CNS, and that the only written and video records we have of the incident are recorded Read More …

Midshipman’s Log Part 92 Gregory Samuels September 9, 1252 CNS I can’t reiterate enough how lucky I was to get this job. I can’t say it enough, and I’m not trying to kiss anyone’s ass. But these opportunities don’t just swing around once in a lifetime; they don’t swing around at all. I really need the money, and this job is a fair sight more meaningful than stacking shelves. My head is clear, head is empty, which is no better or worse than any man could have asked for, circumstances being what they are. Trying not to think about family. Of course, they were the whole reason. So, the monthly record of the mental wherewithal of my crewmates. Lieutenant Whatley, I think, has always thought very highly of himself despite being relegated to the command of military civilians. He still carries around his sidearm, trying to spin it about like some hinterland sheriff. I wonder if it even works anymore, how often he drops it. Maybe he thinks we’ll be intimidated, but it’s not like the four of us have never seen a gun before; hell, we’ve all gone through at least superficial firearms training—on the off chance of Read More …

Midshipman’s Log Part 93 Gregory Samuels September 11, 1252 CNS I’ll skip the usual pleasantries. I’m unhappy, more than a little unhappy, and that’s enough; you’ll find out why very shortly. We were making for the XV2308B transit buoy when—surprise surprise—something showed up on the sensor suite difficult in appearance and producing—what they said—a regular monotonous series of what sounded like key-strokes. At the time I was again taking inventory in the seventh starboard storage module when Lieutenant Whatley sounded on the PA firstly that potential salvage had been located and secondly that he intended to alter course to retrieve this for what he termed an “unbelievable salvage bonus.” Space detritus—salvage bonus. Man must be out of his mind. I have this dark impression that Donnelly put him up to this, which was ultimately his decision, and I can’t imagine Matheson, who most assuredly would have been present, would have put up much in the way of protest. That thing, whatever it is, they placed it in the largely empty starboard storage module number 23. Things haven’t been the same since. Anomalous Object’s Container in Cargo Bay 23 Call it the ecstasy of gold, or call it space madness if Read More …

Midshipman’s Log Part 94 Gregory Samuels September 14, 1252 CNS I can’t believe this! I can’t believe this! I must be out of my head! I mean! I mean! I mean, come on! How! What what what?! Shoot shoot. I should calm down. Really must calm down. For posterity, right? What else am I to do? Command isn’t going to believe this. I can’t rightly blame them. But it’s real! It happened! And you’re mad if you take all this exclamation for child-like excitement. Of all the places one could be in the universe, I would choose any—just not here. I’ll start from the beginning. In my previous log entry, I discussed the acquisition of an anomalous object and the subsequent bizarre behavior of my fellow crew members. Well, I don’t know how to say it; they’re gone—all of them; they’re gone—flung to the far winds. It began as if a maintenance accident. I couldn’t get hold of Donnelly or O’Leary. I got on the PA and called for the lieutenant, who replied as if I’d caught him masturbating, with the vile vitriol of which only the commissioned are capable. But mid-sentence, without a word, a sound, or even a Read More …

Midshipman’s Log Part 95 Gregory Samuels September 20, 1252 CNS I can’t really deny it. It’s getting to me. It’s been a some time since everything’s gone quiet. I spent the first few days stalking through the corridors painstakingly in search of unwanted passengers and some sign or signal of the whereabouts or final destination of my comrades, but it’s all just empty; there’s nothing there, not the rattling call of a hoarse throat down a long steel corridor or the paddling reverberation of fleeing or pursuing footfalls, but it’s just empty, as vacuous as the murderer that surrounds these stalwart six walls. I spent the first day huddled up within the crew quarters; I don’t think I even blinked the whole time, fixated upon the solid-steel door encapsulated within the auspices of Hercules’s ponderous bulkheads. But eventually I grew hungry, hungry enough to risk murder—or worse things only imagined. The mess was immaculate. Not a scratch and certainly not a boom interrupted the seemingly slow preparation of my freeze-dried rations. Biscuits and gravy—filthy stuff—I don’t know what alligator-besotted backwater concocted it, but hunger, you see, is the finest sauce, even if it is hard to eat with your left hand Read More …

All twenty-eight chapters of the Gregory Samuels series have been released. There’s no more, but there will be sequels in the future. For the time being, there will be about a week and a half of unreleased though essential content–that I just never got around to posting–to be followed with a forty-four part series about pirates and slavery–and what you might call “romance”–and spectacle violence. It’s the incipient story of the chevalier Arius and how his life got “flipped turned upside down.” Gritty fantasy with a dash of dark humor. After writing mechanized violence for nearly two years, trying to make it sound visceral, it was refreshing to just be able to plug the other guy with a bit of pointed stick with the effusions of gore necessarily entailed. Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for the moment. Wish I had more to tell.

The following is the first of five short stories from my recently published book, The Sagas of the Iron Hearts: Fragments, which can be found here and the Kindle Edition here. If you enjoyed it, you can peruse at your will the remaining four for the low low price of $5.99 paperback and $0.99 kindle edition. Every sale is a step towards paying my utilities and a step away from being evicted from my meager lodgings by my girlfriend, whose mother warned her about me. Anyways: The Fall 1. Lost amidst the infinite specks of starry sky there hurtled through the void an errant youth huddled within the still belly of a metal monolith. The dusky ovaloid capsule—engraved with the ancient production markings of an age beyond memory, scored and seared with centuries of use—was a thing monstrous, several stories in length. The wild-eyed youth of fluttering heart, the traveler comfortably enshrouded within the armored auspices of the soaring bulwark, could strangely think only of his own inconsequence—how small he was against the titanic backdrop of stars and galaxies that would dwarf him just as easily as the events at hand—and his own part in them. Dread ruminations of catastrophic failure, that there Read More …

The following is the first of five short stories from my recently published book, The Sagas of the Iron Hearts: Fragments, which can be found here. If you enjoyed it, you can peruse at your will the remaining four for the low low price of $4.99 paperback and $0.99 kindle edition. Every sale is a step towards paying my utilities and a step away from being evicted from my meager lodgings by my girlfriend, whose mother warned her about me. Anyways: The Fall 1. Lost amidst the infinite specks of starry sky there hurtled through the void an errant youth huddled within the still belly of a metal monolith. The dusky ovaloid capsule—engraved with the ancient production markings of an age beyond memory, scored and seared with centuries of use—was a thing monstrous, several stories in length. The wild-eyed youth of fluttering heart, the traveler comfortably enshrouded within the armored auspices of the soaring bulwark, could strangely think only of his own inconsequence—how small he was against the titanic backdrop of stars and galaxies that would dwarf him just as easily as the events at hand—and his own part in them. Dread ruminations of catastrophic failure, that there is no undying glory, Read More …